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Aid for Marseille

This was supposed to be Marseille’s year to shine. After the European Union named Marseille the European Capital of Culture for 2013, money poured into the city, which now has a revitalized port and new cultural centers. But Marseille has not been able to shake its old demons of lawlessness and poverty. After a series of gangland-style killings this year, including the murder of the son of the director of Marseille’s popular Olympique soccer club in September, the French government convened crisis talks.

On Friday, France’s prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, announced a bold response: his government will commit 3 billion euros, about $4 billion, to the region, including important investments in Marseille’s northern districts where 40 percent of youth are unemployed in some areas and more than 20 percent of the population is poor. This is no small sum for budget-battered France. Money will be spent to improve public transportation, renovate public housing, provide assistance for poor families and create jobs.

Critics have accused the Socialist government of trying to buy victory in the March municipal elections. No doubt the Socialists want to wrest control of the city from Jean-Claude Gaudin, a member of the center-right Union for a Popular Movement party, who has been mayor of Marseille for 18 years. But the national government is also making good on campaign promises by President François Hollande to improve France’s troubled urban zones. He made a pledge in August to invest 5 billion euros, about $6.7 billion, in poor urban neighborhoods around the country, largely in the form of credits to private employers who hire unemployed youth.

The French government is wise to direct more resources to those hit hardest by the country’s economic crisis: urban youth from immigrant backgrounds whose lives are frustrated by discrimination, unemployment and crime.

A version of this editorial appears in print on November 13, 2013, in The International New York Times. Today's Paper|Subscribe